Poppalina

Garage Raiding

I have this friend who loves me. The kind of love that always calls me first when she's cleaning out the garage.

The most exciting moment of all was when she dug out and gave me some books I've been looking for for YEARS. They were among a small collection that were cooking bibles to my mother. If I wasn't such a Tough Girl, I might have cried. At last I can make that hippie apple and yoghurt cake with sunflower seeds that Mum used to cook.

 

 

All in all, a rather marvellous, sunny-in-a-very-nearly-Winter-kind-of-way, Saturday afternoon. So much excitement, I'm going to have to stay home and be quiet for, like, ever.

Hugs to the Gupster. May she continue to need surfaces, darling.

In the End, they had to Lock her Away

Okay, so which one of you smarty pantses out there nominated me for a Blog Of The Day Award?

I had to a laugh. The comments section is jammed with people nominating themselves. Who would do that?

The handstitching continues. The medication has dropped me from 5th to 2nd gear, a bit like running, full tilt, into a brick wall. Oy. But I found the energy, somehow, to throw two magnificent wobblies at my daughter, the most spectacular of them erupting after driving all the way across town to bring her to a state of yogic stillness, then shattering all our Good Work by screaming and kicking inanimate objects later, when she kept changing her mind about what she wanted to eat for dinner.

How very yogic of me.The medication is making me a Little Unpredictable. And Occasionally Dangerous. I also Feel Very Bad about it. I expect I'll be remembered by Mym as a Generally Nice Mummy, except when I wasn't, and turned into a Gorgon for no reason that she can ever remember.

And so I stay in my bedroom as much as possible, in the interest of Family Safety. I'm considering a lock on the door from the outside, lest I sprout a second head and roam freely, mercilessly hunting people down and pulling out their eyes for not rinsing their dishes or even putting them in the sink, visiting upon them my Less Than Divine Retribution.

Because it's so Very. Bloody. Annoying.

Twice a Day With Meals, And Please Do Try To Get Yourself Laid

So I go into the hospital totally psyched for radioactive treatment, fortified by weeks of soul-searching, childcare brainstorming, internet research. Hell, I even had someone organised to take the dog who, as long as he lives, will never grasp the idea of not being within patting distance of me, and who I had visions of glowing like Casper the Ghost after an evening by my side.

All this magnificent preparation, and my specialist puts me back on the meds, instead.

Oh man, anything but the pills. I hate the pills. They make me fat. And slow.

They work, however. My heart is no longer attempting to exit my rib cage, which is a Good Thing. Apparently, the radiation may or may not come later, for those of you who've been kind enough to ask.

My endocrinologist also informs me, in an exhaustive consultation, that intimacy is crucial to good health, and that I really should consider dating. I sit there, rather confused, searching frantically in my mind for a causal link between celibacy and thyro-toxicity. I don't find one, probably because it doesn't exist.

So I ask him if he's married, and of course he is and has been, blissfully, for 25 years.

Which confirms what I already know; that the Lovely Paul, with his endearing Einstein hairdo and cool-but-not-cold-hands, knows sweet fuck all about being alone. If he did, he would already understand that the bane of a sole parent's existence occurs when one of their well-meaning-but-bumbleheaded-friends tries to fix them up on a blind date with their accountant/hairdresser/recently-divorced-parent-of-their-6-year-old's-best-friend. Or tells them that they need to get out more and meet men. I swear, it makes me want to join a nunnery. To me, it's as offensive as telling one of my married friends that they really should consider having an affair, lest they expire from smugness.

He meant well enough, and it beats the hell out of a doctor who makes you wait 4 hours for a 5 minute consultation - I had a 5 minute wait, an hour's consultation and, for the most part, a rollicking good time - and, assuming my mojo hasn't completely forsaken me, I s'pose I could walk into a bar, pick up some complete stranger and bring him home to meet my teenage daughter.

But I'm currently sharing my bed with a Major Quilt Operation, and can't possibilty accomodate an extra body until after 2010.

Oh, and here's this week's mosaic, because it is Monday, after all and hey, it's not like I'm busy having sex or anything.

Oy.

1. NH Sheep and Wool, 2. Sweden, 3. 'Hour 2' close, 4. Untitled, 5. Midday Flop, 6. doilies, 7. 2dollar, 8. constant, 9. Untitled, 10. circles, 11. inourparisapartment, 12. Proclaim your love elsewhere...., 13. Untitled, 14. crazy pickets, 15. the weekend, 16. Exit, 17. Closeup, 18. COLLABORATION with Shawna Handke, 19. 365:92 cupcake week, 20. Handhelds: Binky Buddy No.17, 21. eggs, 22. lamby lucha libre, 23. Sheep, 24. Isabel Marant, 25. We Went Whale Watch'n

Strange Brew

By the time I'd finished with the waitress, her coffee service had developed a raging case of chickenpox.

But it made me laugh, and that's a Good Thing.

This one's for Leah.

If I Were a Car, I'd Trade Me In

These days, I'm obliged to live very quietly, in order to function at all. No excitement whatsoever, lest I start to have fun, whereby my head would most probably explode into a thousand teeny pieces.

Tired of trying to explain to the Resident Eggheads that I get Zippy the Pinhead Syndrome whenever anyone shrieks, or barks, or if the telly goes up to eleven, (I even tried crying, to no avail, teenagers seem hardwired to not notice), I have retreated to my bedroom, with the door closed.

Handsewing. When my eyes are up for it. Otherwise, sleeping. On the rare occaisions that I leave the house, I wear extra-dark glasses, because I am a vampire and the sun burns my eyes, and because I want people to look at me twice and wonder if I'm a rock star travelling incognito.

My antique crazy patchwork quilt, handstitched in silk during the Victorian era, which managed to happily survive the last 100 years, has been all but shredded from living on my bed and being jumped on by kids and dogs in the last five. It's a mess.

So I'm fixing it.

Or I've started to, anyway.

Starting with a patch from the stash; an embroidered potholder from the 1920s that was never completed, that I found God knows where, and which I've souped up a little.

I notice, for the first time, that more than one person made this quilt, there is such variance in the stitching. And I wonder what these women dreamed of while they sewed. Were they happy, hopeful, heartbroken? In their wildest dreams, could they possibly imagine that I would be sitting here,100 years later and on the other side of the world, working on the same quilt? I ponder on like this for hours, as the first patch nears completion. Only a hundred and eleventy to go.

I'd forgotten how magical and restorative hand stitching is. The light in my bedroom is perfect.

Tomorrow, the endocrinologist. I hope he has something inspiring to say.

Mosaic Monday

It's been a big week for bears.

Which can't be a Bad Thing.

Okay, So I'd Make a Lousy Stage Mother

A rare flash of genius prompted me to show Jude's 'What if' to my daughter, as an example of a visual diary, and What Artists Do to keep track of their ideas.

Very inspired, indeed, was the Creative Genius and, being home for a week with the flu, she then spent a respectable part of it establishing her own, on paper.

However, it turns out that a visual diary, to Mym, differs from a conventional personal diary only insofar as the private thoughts and secrets recorded are accompanied by painstaking and elaborate illustrations. Exquisitely beautiful, naturally, but inaccessible to everyone but her, and quite unbloggable. Even I was reluctantly offered only the briefest glimpse on the solemn promise that I will not read the text ever, or look at any of it in her absence, on pain of slow and monstrous death.

Now, we take promises seriously, here at Chez Poppalina. You could blow your credibility for life, breaking a promise around here and this, let me tell you, is a Seriously Challenging Promise to Keep.

A part of me acknowledges that I have a lot to learn about teaching. Having her make art that I couldn't share in was Not What I Meant At All; creating work that I couldn't post online and brag to everyone about even less so. Somewhere along the line it seems I lost control of the ball.

But then, I paused to consider what Jude herself might have to say about this, and although I'm not sure precisely what that would be, I do know it would be something non-interventionist, philosophical, and celebratory. Something about letting it run and seeing where it might take you, about allowing the process to unfold, about the journey being the creative experience and the result essentially a biproduct.

In short, a brief and eloquent treatise on the Yoga of Art.

So I said nothing. I let it ride. The preconceptions and aspirations I had held about a controlled and structured environment in which my daughter would regularly churn out work to improve her skills and provide me with convenient blog posts to wow you all with, I tucked away in a little box at the back of my underwear drawer, along with a number of other Almost Brilliant Ideas.

After all, who am I to tell a Creative Genius how to create?

Vegetarians Unite

People keep giving me things and I don't know why.

Kate dropped by with cake, and this exquisite child.

Whom I wanted to keep, but alas, her generosity did appear to have limits.

And Lucy, who was almost definitely my sister in a Previous Life, sent me some truly excellent manuals on how to be a vegetarian and not starve to death, providing me with some absorbing reading at the doctor's surgery this morning,

So much so that I forgot where I was and when my name was called I shrieked, so loudly that I freaked everyone out.

Lucy, you really are a gem. I hope you're home on Fridays, because my new traditional Chinese medicine dude is just around the corner from you.

Now, to get my hands on some arame.

Mosaic Monday

Late, I know.

I have been sick again. More lying in bed with the blinds drawn, wanting to die, more of my eyeballs threatening to burst clean out of my skull, more kids eating pizza, more dogs looking worried and refusing to leave my side.

But I just jumped the queue with my specialist by six months, and will have a plan of action by Friday night. Also acquired a kick-ass acupuncturist, who brought me immediate relief. Wish I'd found him 5 years ago, but never mind.

So that's good.

Not sure how much more of this half-dead business I can take.

Funny though, every time I come back to life, I find a new appreciation for the simplest things. Sunshine, the fun my dog has chasing a ball, the sound of my daughter dissolving into giggles, a particularly handsome-looking eggplant at the grocer's.

Easily pleased, that's me.

I've also turned into a vegetarian. Me. Queen of the Sunday Roast. How the fuck did that happen? I have no idea how to be one.

I imagine I'll learn. And that my daughter will one day forgive me.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes. The mosaic. Sorry.

 

1. Spring Crafts - Butterfly, 2. Untitled, 3. she's really good, 4. nuturing, 5. Baby Elephant, 6. Haverhill throw, 7. New Bear, 8. misio diary - 02.05.08, 9. Indian dupattas, 10. emmaline4, 11. ~, 12. my oldest and newest bears, 13. mona's heartstring, 14. Untitled, 15. capoeira in the sea, 16. freshley hatched, 17. Save the Girl Child-00128, 18. phobos, 19. tiny white flowers, 20. Another Way of Watching the Sky, 21. Untitled, 22. Charm Bracelet no.1, 23. wawaya - dragon macro, 24. icing, 25. mandarin Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

More Art, You Bastards

As far as I can tell, Visual Arts at your average Australian state high school is funded at the rate of approximately 50 cents per student, per annum. Assuming a student actually manages to find their way into the broom cupboard right down the back that is the Art Department, the most creative thing they're going to get time to do there is find a pen that works.

Such things are to be borne, but not graciously. In fact, I bitch about it a lot. I bitch about the fact that the school manages, somehow, to find the funding for a LOT of Compulsory Maths (5 periods a week, all year, till year 10), a subject that I know for a fact my daughter neither learns nor needs, and yet can manage just one hour a fortnight for Art.

Let me repeat that. Onefuckinghourafortnight.

And we wonder why the world's going to Hell in a Handbasket?

Anyway, my only viable response was to step up the art at home. Less computer. Less TV. More art. It's proving a little challenging to implement without screen accompaniment, but I'm holding firm. A Creative Genius is only a Creative Genius if it actually Creates Something Really Really Cool on a Regular Basis. Otherwise, it's just another dumb kid hanging around the schoolyard, talking shit.

Or something like that. It was a Rather Inspired Lecture. Honest.

Many thanks to Sue Scott for Mym's needlefelting lesson, and for the DIY felting presents that came home with us, so we can needlefelt ALL THE TIME, if we want to. DAMN, that woman is cool.